


Tröstung

by ClassyFangirl



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Canon Disabled Character, Comfort Objects, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, internalized ableism, stuffed animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 18:33:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClassyFangirl/pseuds/ClassyFangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Hermann is three years old, his mother gives him a stuffed lamb.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tröstung

**Author's Note:**

> I have SO MANY OTHER THINGS I need to be doing, including my Christmas fic, countless prompts, and, you know, studying for finals. But we have this instead. I hope you're happy.

When Hermann is three years old, his mother gives him a stuffed lamb.

Later in life, he doesn’t remember much of the day, except that he was in the hospital- not an uncommon event in his childhood. He does remember sitting up in bed, blinking at the bright fluorescent lights, and his mother, with her serious but pretty face, smiling at him as she hands him the small plush lamb.

It’s a few inches in length, very soft, a clean white with a little pink mouth and two friendly black eyes. Hermann turns him over in his hands thoughtfully, examining him as he does most everything he finds.

“Do you like it?” his mother asks.

“Oskar,” Hermann says very seriously. “ _Er heißt Oskar._ ”

 

ooo

 

He’s seven, and even though he has three siblings, Hermann mostly plays by himself.

Dietrich is thirteen and thinks he’s king of the world, with eleven-year-old Karla either playing with him or her school friends, and Bastien is four and too little and stupid to be any fun.

Hermann doesn’t go to school- he “doesn’t get along with others”, according to the teacher. It’s not _his_ fault that the other students were idiots. They were studying _addition_ , and he couldn’t help but point out that half his classmates were getting the simplest questions wrong.

He didn’t mention to anyone that, after that, one of the bigger boys kicked him down during recess and called him a freak and made fun of his accent.

But now he has a tutor, and they’re studying maths that Hermann is interested in. He likes algebra, likes solving for variables. He can’t wait to get to physics, but the tutor says that’s a long way off.

Hermann doesn’t mind not going to school. It gives him extra time to play with his airplanes and pretend he’s a real pilot. Best of all, no one makes fun of him for bringing Oskar with him. Well, no one besides Dietrich and Karla, anyway, but he doesn’t care about them.

“You’re too _old_ for stuffed toys,” Dietrich says. “It’s just a stupid sheep, what’s so fun about it?”

“Oskar,” Hermann says. “His _name_ is Oskar.”

Dietrich rolls his eyes and huffs. “ _Dummkopf._ ”

“Shut _up_!”

Oskar is a good friend, the only friend he needs. Oskar listens when he talks about planes, and he doesn’t make fun of him when he stumbles over his English, and he can’t run ahead of him when he knows Hermann can’t keep up. Oskar listens better than anyone else does.

 

ooo

 

Hermann does not make a habit of crying in front of others. The last time he does is when he is nine years old.

He wakes up in a hospital bed, not for the first or last time, but everything feels _wrong_. His body is heavy and his head is fuzzy, and even though most of him is numb, his leg _hurts_ , hurts worse than it ever has before. He sits up as best he can- though even that is difficult -and looks at his father, sitting a few feet away from the bed.

“Hello, Hermann,” he says, curt as ever, even now.

“Where’s Mother?” Hermann asks. She’s _always_ there when he wakes up from a surgery.

“She’s speaking with the doctors.” Screaming at them, he learns later. “The surgery did not go quite how they were planning.”

Hermann frowns. His mind isn’t right- everything feels slower, heavier, like the world is made of molasses. “It didn’t work?”

“No,” his father says. “There may have been...complications.”

He feels his eyes well up with tears, even though he has no idea what he means by “complications”. He hurts and his brain feels wrong and he can’t help but start to cry.

“Stop that,” his father says, his voice icy. “You’ll be just fine. There’s nothing to cry about. Act your age, Hermann.”

Hermann sniffles and rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Y-yes, sir.”

“Good.”

He leaves a few minutes later to take a phone call, and Hermann keeps trying to hold back the tears until he spies Oskar on the table next to him. He sobs openly and snatches Oskar up, and he cries into his soft fur. He cries and cries until there are no tears left, and then he finds himself slowly falling back asleep, clutching Oskar to his chest.

 

ooo

 

They tell him it will take nine months for him to walk again, and he will definitely need a cane some, if not most days, even after the physical therapy.

He falls often, at the beginning, and sometimes he is so frustrated by the end of the day that all he can do is hold Oskar and cry.

But when he cries, he thinks about playing outside with his planes. He thinks about being a pilot.

They tell him it will take nine months to walk again. He does it in six.

 

ooo

 

When Hermann is sixteen, he _knows_ he is too old for Oskar, and leaves him at home when he goes to university.

_Technische Universität_ Berlin has given him quite the generous scholarship, and everything else is cushioned by the Gottlieb family name. Everything is terribly exciting- it’s been too long since school truly challenged him in such a stimulating way. It’s all brand new and wonderful and- and-

And, admittedly, terrifying.

It’s been a few years since he lasted visited Germany, and ten years since the family moved to England, and he’s never been to Berlin before. Hermann has kept practicing his German through the years, but the Berliner accent is far different from his own, and it takes him a while to understand anyone. He hasn’t been away from home this long since his six months in the hospital, and even then his family had visited him every chance they got. Here, he is utterly alone, ostracized by his youth, his brain, his gawky adolescent body, and, of course, the bloody cane.

That _damn_ cane. He’s young, still, and doesn’t need it every day, but with every other damn thing wrong with him, the cane just further cements him away from everyone else.

He’s _lonely_.

When he goes home for break, he takes Oskar out from under his pillow and holds him close, just silently cuddling him and breathing him in.

He slips the little stuffed lamb into his suitcase when he goes back, and university feels less lonely after that.

 

ooo

 

It’s eight o’clock at night and he’s the last one in the lab, so it’s especially shocking when one of his graduate students comes rushing into the room, telling him to check the news.

Once he’s determined that yes, this is real, this is no prank, there really _is_ a giant monster attacking San Francisco, he goes home. He returns to his apartment and sits down his bed, silent. Then he stands again, picks up Oskar from his desk, then sits back down.

The quiet terror that’s been buzzing in the back of his mind, muted slightly by the utter confusion roaring up front, flares into anger, then determination. He stays up all night following the story, taking notes and drinking cup after cup of tea.

Oskar is in his lap the whole time.

 

ooo

 

The day the first Mark I jaeger falls, Herman retreats to the lab, pulls Oskar from his pocket, and slowly sits down on the cold metal floor.

It was a bad day to start with, and he always hides Oskar in his trouser pocket on the bad days. His leg had been aching extra the moment he woke up, and after a cold shower, because the damn water heater’s on the fritz _again_ , he got dressed and immediately slipped the little stuffed lamb into his pocket. Oskar’s presence always brings him a little comfort on the bad days.

Today, however, has only gone from bad to worse.

That was _his_ coding. His original coding, the coding that brought the first jaeger to life, and it was brought down by a kaiju. His creation was fallible. Every lost jaeger has hurt, of course, but this...it feels like the walls are closing in on him. He holds Oskar closer to his chest and takes deep breaths.

“Hermann?” Newt’s voice calls. “Hermann, dude, I know you’re in here- where’d you go?”

He doesn’t bother replying. Newt will find him soon enough. He doesn’t give a damn.

“Hermann? Herm- _there_ you are. I’m- I’m sorry, man.”

Hermann doesn’t say anything. He barely glances over when Newt sits down next to him.

“It’s- god, okay, I won’t lie to you and say I know how much this must hurt. But you _know_ it’s not your fault, right?” Newt scoots closer to him, gently pressing their knees together. “I told them the kaiju are learning, and, like, this should make it obvious. In case it wasn’t already.”

“Hrm.” It’s all he can manage right now- he _does_ want to say something, but he also does not want to cry in front of Newton.

“Anyway. Not your fault.” He can feel Newt’s gaze on him, and he hears him make a quiet noise. “Heh. You too?”

Hermann glances over as Newt reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a scrap of faded red fleece, only a few square inches in size. “This is mine,” he says. “My, uh...well, my doctor, when I was a kid, she called it a comfort object, but I called it _Rot_.” He grins when Hermann raises an eyebrow at him. “I wasn’t a creative kid, so sue me. But yeah. Everywhere I go, in case everything starts being too _much_ , or it’s too loud in my head or something...” He waves the scrap of blanket. “So, y’know. Yours have a name?”

Hermann clears his throat. “Oskar. I, ah. I named him Oskar.”

“Oskar,” Newt repeats, smiling. “Nice to meet you, Oskar.”

They sit together for a while, silent and almost pleasant for once. They’ll go back to screaming at each other tomorrow, surely, but for now...they’re all right.


End file.
